Saturday, September 14, 2013

Time to Marinate in the Data

Sometimes, when you look and look at the facts and they don’t
lead you anywhere, you just have to set them all aside and come back to them later.

That’s what I did, regarding this whole Kelly puzzle, about
ten years ago.

Back then, I had an email volley going with another
researcher trying to make sense of that same Mary Kelly, wife of Timothy, whom
I was tangentially pondering. Believe me, we looked at the family connections
from every angle possible.

Of course, back then, Ancestry.com was a mere babe in arms,
and the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center was someplace where you went. Newspaper databases—or any online
research resource—were gangly, awkward teenaged monstrosities that took a lot
of waiting for not much of a pay-off.

Admittedly, genealogy research has come a long way since I
last visited the puzzle of the Kelly connections.

Even now, though, I somehow feel like I’m not making much
headway. I still can’t, for example, find any marriage data for the mysterious
Mrs. Margaret Sweeney. I’m still having trouble piecing together the family
data for her mother, Timothy Kelly’s second wife, Mary. Whether digitally
riffling through the online records for Kelly versus Kelley, or the quad
challenge of seeking the right spelling—Danehy, Denahy, Danahy, or Danahay—the progress
is defeatingly slow. (Not to mention, it’s just dawned on me that I have a
triple quandary with the addition of spelling variation possibilities for
Sweeney, as well.)

Thankfully, but only just last night, I made a breakthrough.
It will take several posts to explain this all, I’m afraid, so please bear with
me—someone will want to know this at some point, so I do want to post it online
to connect with possible future searches.

What I realized in the process is that sometimes, not only
do we need to set stuff aside and let it percolate in the back of our brains,
but we can also use the help of consciously
taking the facts and surrounding ourselves with all that data. Take a bath in
it. Soak it up. Scramble the data around, like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Play “What
If?” with lists of what we’ve found. Sketch it out on timelines and see how the
dates and names jive.

I can’t tell you how many pieces of scratch paper I drafted
in this quest to figure out Mary Kelly and her daughter Margaret. Let’s just
say I’m glad I always keep a stash of paper scraps at hand.

I’ve shuffled those lists around, staring at them, playing
with them, getting them into my mind, asking myself questions to see what’s
missing from the picture taking shape from the lists of documentation I already
have.

And then, a breakthrough. It all began with one simple
question: If Mary was Timothy’s widow, why wasn’t she buried with her husband?

And if she wasn’t
buried in the Kelly family plot, where was
she buried?

Well, Danni, I know this sounds greedy of me, but I just want to find out everything! I'd love to know how this family is all connected--and where they came from in Ireland, to boot! Right now, the connections are too tangled for me to follow clearly.

About Me

It is my contention that, after a lifetime, one of the greatest needs people have is to be remembered. They want to know: have I made a difference?
I write because I can't keep for myself the gifts others have entrusted to me. Through what I've already been given--though not forgetting those to whom I must pass this along--from family I receive my heritage; through family I leave a legacy. With family I weave a tapestry. These are my strands.